MP too quick to jump to Partygate verdict
IN hindsight, which is always 20:20, Jake Berry’s intervention into the debate over Boris Johnson’s Partygate fine was one of the most remarkable things he’s said in his time as our local MP.
Mr Johnson was in Parliament a week Tuesday ago to apologise for his birthday gathering in Downing Street during a period of time when we were banned from doing the same.
Indeed, at a time when we were banned from seeing loved ones in care homes.
Mr Berry told Mr Johnson: “The people of Rossendale and Darwen will have weighed the words of the Prime Minister carefully today and will, like me, feel that it is a contrite and wholehearted apology.
“They will also be looking at the action of the Prime Minister in Ukraine.
“Will he consider putting Britain at the forefront of a new Marshall plan to rebuild Ukraine after Putin has been defeated, and fund this, in part, from the assets that the British state has confiscated from Russian oligarchs?”
It was a remarkable statement for several reasons.
The first is the practical: The PM had literally minutes before just apologised, so the idea that Mr
Berry somehow had time to take a representative temperature of what the people of Rossendale and Darwen did think about the PM’s apology is just fanciful.
Perhaps Mr Berry had gone to Westminster that morning with a sense that local voters had already moved on from Partygate.
If that is the case, that is what he should have said.
The idea that people here were tuned into the PM apologising live on TV and immediately sharing
their verdict is just a nonsense.
Mr Berry has won successive general elections with sizeable majorities, so it makes sense he feels he can talk with an authority about what Rossendale and Darwen thinks.
But at no point has he actually prompted a debate or a conversation with voters about the conduct of his government and the many, many parties held in and around Downing Street at a time when the rest of us were banned from attending funerals unless we were really close family.
People might be fed up of Partygate, may want the story to move on, may be focusing on other important things in their lives.
But to say the forgiveness of Rossendale and Darwen has been secured?
It’s nonsense.
A week is a long time in politics, apparently, and within days of Mr Berry standing up four-square behind the PM, it became clear Mr Berry was not in the majority.
Attempts by Downing Street to prevent a Parliamentary inquiry into what went on were squashed when it became clear many backbench Tories weren’t prepared to block it.
Locally too, the comments are unhelpful, as evidenced by the way local Labour activists, so close to an election locally, were all over social media ensuring as many people as possible saw what was said – and their interpretation of it.
It would be interesting to know how Mr Berry reached his conclusions – and whether his view has changed since.